January 10, 2007

Participants: Jon, Ben, David K, Shevi, Nadine, Gili, Adam, Zack, Binyamin, Eyal

Eyal returned for his second visit. With Zack barely speaking Hebrew, and Eyal speaking English, but much more comfortable in Hebrew, games are our meeting point.

And with only ten people, it's amazing how many games can hit the table
on a single game evening.

Feurio

Binyamin, Jon, Nadine

Binyamin came to me and asked me to see if I could find anything resembling tactics or strategy is this game that seems to get a lot of high praise on BGG. Knowing only that he doesn't see any, I gamely sat down and gave it a looksee.

The game consists of hexes numbered 1 through 6. Each turn, you flip over a tile and must place it at any location that has the highest numbered surrounding hexes. So where you can place the tiles is very limited, and sometimes give no choice at all.

Then you choose to put some of your meeples onto any one piece on the board that still has available space. Since you have a limited (but not very) number of meeples, you have to decided where to put them. Also, you may only put onto a hex the maximum of a) 2/2 the number on the hex, rounded up, or b) the number of free edges the hex has remaining. If a hex becomes surrounded, it does not lose the meeples it has already acquired.

That's it. At the end of the game, you score the numbers on the tiles under each of your herds divided by the number of the lowest tile that is not entirely surrounded by other hexes.

While this all sounds good on paper, I was forced to agree less than five turns into the game that Binyamin is entirely correct. While not entirely free of any tactics altogether (although entirely free of strategy), the barest amount that you have under your control is so pitiful, and your moves so forced, and the results so luck-dependent, that I literally stopped caring by the last third of the game, and couldn't even be bothered to count, let alone record, the scores.

It's just dull, and what decisions there are are effectively meaningless. The possibility that one could actually block your opponent, as opposed to simply taking the maximum score on each play, is a non-starter, and if it occurs was also beyond your control.

The only thing nice I have to say about the game is as follows: it's quick and easy to learn. The mechanic of how the hexes spread is a neat mechanic and fits the theme (fire spreading), but entirely doesn't work in this game.

San Juan

David, Shevi

Shevi has decided opinions about games. These two came and tried to get in a filler game, but abandoned it after a few rounds, because two others had also shown up, and because Shevi didn't like the game.

Santiago

Zack 94, David 91, Eyal 79, Shevi 70

Instead they played this excellent game. The rules are almost as simple as Fuerio, but boy is there a difference in game play!

Wildlife

Nadine 100, Gili 89, Adam 87, Binaymin 73

I sat down to start this game again, eager for another play, and this time with the correct rules (about herds). Halfway through the explanation Adam appeared, so we included him. After the explanation, Ben appeared, and I refused to turn it into a six player game, so I abandoned it to play with Ben.

In general, people liked the game, except Binyamin. This wasn't helped by the fact that Nadine had a mammoth herd on the board and was on her way to winning near the end of the game when Adam and Gili decided to spend upwards of 45 minutes taking a single turn in an attempt to find a way to break it up.

This resulted in Nadine getting rather bored, and Binyamin getting rather frustrated, and I can't say that I blame them. All in all, this extended the game to around 4 hours. For 4 players. Ouch.

Caylus

Jon/David+, Ben

So I sat down to play 2-player Caylus with Ben who had only played it once before and 3-player at that. We got going, and then David popped over from finishing his Santiago game, sad that he had wanted to play it. Since I wasn't really into it anyway, I got up, yet again, and let David take over for me.

This was David's first play with 2-players.

Princes of Florence

Zack 60, Jon 59, Shevi 52, Eyal 43

Instead, I got to teach three first-time player the joys of PoF. Luckily, Eyal could understand enough of my English to play the game. Shevi was initially fearful, but began to get into it. Zack and Eyal liked it already by the end of the first round.

The only real strategy tips I give is the approximate values for the auction items in the first few rounds, especially warning about the Jesters and Recruiters (the latter less so in a 4-player game). Zack took the first two Jesters for 1200 and 1300, while I took the next three or so for more reasonable prices.

Shevi took Builder in the first two turns for 900 and 1000, which I thought was rather excessive. Other than that, most other items went for fairly cheap, and several times several players took items for the minimum price of 200.

I had no real luck with my cards, but still played a fairly solid game, which seemed to be pretty good. Zack's win in the end was simply for having the 3 point bonus for best work as well as buying a Prestige card on the last turn for a full 8 points.

Settlers of Catan

Eyal 10, Zack 8, Jon 5

Shevi left, and I wanted a filler game for three. Since Eyal and Zack had played Settlers even prior to joining my club, this was one of the few games that we could get into and play through quickly. I started on reasonable places, including the only worthwhile brick hex, the 8, where the others were on 2 and 3.

The other players had more city starts, with high ore and wheat. That wouldn't have bothered me, as I shared their wheat and ore hexes as well. But wouldn't you know? 8 never rolled up except when the robber was on it - and I mean not once the entire game - whereas 3 rolled up at least half a dozen times in the first twenty rounds or so. Eyal even traded 4 bricks for something at one point.

I sulkily decided that my goal was simply to get to five points before the game ended, which I actually managed to do, with one round to spare.

Tichu

Adam/Jon 65, Nadine/Zack 35

There was discussion over whether to play Bridge or Tichu, and our population had difficulty figuring out how to do this.

We played one hand of Tichu here with no Tichu being called. While this game was going on, I simultaneously played Lost Cities with Binyamin.

David/Jon 50, Adam/Zack 150

And then I simultaneously played Tichu while playing Bridge. We played two hands here, and even though David and I "won" the last hand, we netted 0 points from the tricks.

Lost Cities

Jon 100 something, Binyamin 30 something

Known on BGG as the best two-player game or as the best game to play with your non-gaming spouse, I have to completely disagree with the former while reserving some judgment on the latter. As a gamer, this game is simply brainless. Oh, it's much better than Feurio, as the decisions you make are actually meaningful and the game includes both tactics and strategies. But they are not that deep, and can easily be absorbed by the end of the first game.

As a result, I was easily able to play this simultaneously with Tichu, win to boot, and not particularly care anyway.

Bridge

Ben/Beinyamin 400, Jon/Nadine 0

Ben and Bin made two games while Nadine and I went down in one. Bridge is still The card game, and Tichu is Bridge-lite - very lite. As light as can be an simple be a complex and interesting game. Well, maybe Team Hearts is even lighter, but no lighter than that.

January 03, 2007

Participants: Jon, Tal, Zack, Alex, Nadine, David, Shevi, Josh, Jelman, Idit, Adam, Gili, Binyamin, Ben

Zack brought his grandfather Alex (I think I got the name right). He had no particular game history, but is a brainy, curious, and friendly type, which made him a happy addition to the group. Josh brought his friend Jelman (again, not sure about the name) who lives in Katamon. Jelman had game experience and was astonished and thrilled to come to the group. I expect his return as a regular.

I had gone over the rules to Netrunner before the group and was eager to try it out with my CCG partner David. Since we ended up with more than ten attendees, I was able to leave the others to work out their game choices while David and I slipped away for a go.

Saboteur

Saboteurs: Alex, Nadine, Shevi +, Dwarves: Jon, Tal, Zack, David

We started off with five until David and Shevi showed up. With five, two saboteurs against three dwarves is bad enough. Three saboteurs to four dwarves is nearly impossible. Especially when the rock slides all end up with the saboteurs.

Everything seemed hopeless until the deck ran out. Suddenly we were able to make a comeback, exploring a side branch and diligently working our way to the gold nugget. Unfortunately, we got close - within two lengths - but not close enough.

We played the game as a filled, and so we stopped after the first round. This was first game for all players (except me) and all of them seemed to like it well enough.

Netrunner

David, Jon

David and I slipped off to try out Netrunner. We've been playing Magic for ten years and have never tried another CCG. I recently acquired both this and the Middle Earth CCGs, having heard great things about them. Too bad both are now discontinued.

Initial impressions are: wow! I haven't seen bad CCG's yet, so I don't know if I can simply say that the entire idea simply lends itself to incredibly rich and complex gaming, or if I'm spoiled by these two great games.

The major differences between Netrunner and Magic are the unequal roles of the two players and the victory conditions. In Netrunner, one player plays the Corp, whose job is to play and activate Agendas, while the other plays the hacker, whose job it is to raid the Agendas before the Corp can activate them. The Corp tries to prevent the Runner from raiding by placing ICE defenses in the way of his raids or by dealing direct damage to the Runner, while the Runner tries to increase his hardware, resources, and countermeasure programs to give him enough power to get past the Corp's ICE and heal or prevent the damage.

I have only the barest feel for the types of cards that exist, how to approach the game strategically or tactically, or even the basic rules, of which we got several wrong on our first attempt, of course. We only made it through a few turns before we decided to stop and join others for a larger game. But I definitely look forward to trying it again.

Wildlife

Nadine, Zack, Alex, Josh, Jelman, Idit

Like other great games, six appears to be pushing the limit as far as downtime for a game like this. Despite this, they all seemed to enjoy the game. They discovered a major rule we had wrong, namely that points are given for largest herd, not most amount of creatures. This game went on for much of the evening.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Adam (B) +, Gili (W)

Adam and Gili had to wait for the Saboteur game, so they played this. This time, Adam took my advice and caught Frodo in the mountains where he couldn't retreat.

Children of Fire: the Board Game

David 14, Gili 9, Jon 8, Adam 8

Adam and I were both looking forward to trying this again. I enjoyed it again, but I think both Gili and David felt like it dragged on near the end. They may be right. One problem with the game is the lack of a definite ending, so there is a sense of wanting to simply end the game just to get it over with. This could easily be fixed by adding a limit to the number of rounds to the game, such as ten or so.

We still don't have an answer to two of our rules questions, both of which came up again.

In our game, I was thwarted on every turn, achieving only two of my four primary prophecies and not through my own effort but only because someone else wanted it, too. That, and the four masses I converted, gave me only 8 points. Adam did a lot of the moving, achieving a huge number of influence stones again, but even though he locked two of the figures, he didn't do any better than I did.

Gili had an additional secondary prophecy fulfilled and one less mass than either of us. David, on the other hand, fulfilled every single one of his prophecies, both major and minor, and also has a mass stone. This, despite losing countless times the fight over the influence stones to Adam, who always seemed to beat him with just the card he needed, just one number above David's.

Palazzo

Binyamin 45, Ben 41, Shevi 39

Binyamin introduced this game that is "better than Alhambra". It is, but I still didn't think it ws any great shakes. Ben particularly didn't like it, because he doesn't like auction games in general. Shevi and Binyamin both liked it.

Binyamin won, as he did for the rest of the games he played this evening.

Metro

Binyamin 72, Ben 68, Shevi 57

Binyamin introduced yet another game, about which I heard many mediocre comments on BGG. I don't know how it was received.

Power Grid

Binyamin+, Ben

Shevi left, so they played this two-player. As usual, Ben was blindsided occasionally by a forgotten rule, and he doesn't perform well in the auctions for the power plants, anyway.

Tichu

Nadine/Adm 205, Jon/David -5

Settling in to some enjoyable play, and we discussed whether their is any real cooperative aspect to the partnership. I maintain that as we become more experienced, our discards and play will become more subtle and more able to fully utilize the partnership aspect of the game.

We played three hands. I called Tichu in the third hand, and lost only to a bomb played by Nadine before I could finish my hand. Hence the negative score.

Attendees: Yehuda, Ben, Sharon, Yacov, Nadine, Ari, David K, Saarya, Ephrayim

First of all, the Strategist, The monthly newsletter of the Strategy Gaming Society has published part two of my Puerto Rico expansion buildings. The first part was an early version of my first three sets, and the second part is a more recent version of my second three sets. The current and correct (more playtested, and therefore more balanced) versions of all six sets can be gotten by emailing me.

Before the official game evening, David K came over to whip me in several games (he came Sunday, too). Lucky for me, I don't put the results in the scoreboard unless we play during the official game hours :-) . The importance of these pregames was that:

* I have decided that Citadels works with two or three players, but not with more.
* We tried a game of El Grande for two people, using one of the variants on the Geek and it was great. I was led to believe that it would be horrible. Not at all.
* We played two player Princes of Florence, my first Princes of Florence game of any type, using Kramer's rules, and it seemed to work fine. Next time I will try the other variant listed on the Geek.
* We played two games. In the first game, David seemed to concentrate on builders, which, even if I thought quarries were useful in Puerto Rico, which I don't, are not so useful here, especially when there is not much in the way of competitive auctioning. In the second game, David latched on to the secret jester strategy, and easily defeated me.
* In two player, Recruit cards never get bought, and the Prestige cards are usually maximum value.

The real game session began when Yacov, Ben, Ari (a friend from Beit Shemesh), Nadine and Ephrayim came in. We split into two groups.

El Grande
Yacov, Ben, Ari and David K played El Grande. I couldn't really follow, but it seemed like massive amounts of people were getting dumped into the castle. The final scores were very close, with Yacov squeaking out a close victory at something like 120 points, a few points past second, third and fourth places.

Princes of Florence
Meanwhile, I taught Nadine and Ephrayim how to play Princes of Florence, my first game with more than 2 players. Interestingly, Nadine and Ephrayim both liked it more than El Grande, while I like El Grande more. Nadine thought about it and then said that El Grande was more directly interactive all the time, which makes you feel constantly into it. We were into PoF also, but it was a more pastoral and calm game, certainly, and the auction definitely gives interaction. However, most of our auctions went for the minimum bids. I had so much money I didn't know what to do with it. Nadine looked like she was winning, as she also picked up on the jester strategy, and was producing the best works and taking the pp's. I did manage to get two prestige cards, but they both ended up at half value. Nevertheless, I crept closer and closer, and finally landed on the same spot as Nadine, winning by a 100 Fl tiebraker.

Settlers of Catan
After some rearranging, we played two more simultaneous games. Ben, Sharon and Yacov played Settlers, where it appears that the only bricks were on 12, 3 and 11, Sharon was on the 3, and she proceeded to roll six 3's in a row. Ah, there's nothing like a challenging game of Setttlers, and apparently this was nothing like a challenging game of Settlers. Yacov said playing the game was like watching the Enola Gay come into Hiroshima. Sharon won.

Puerto Rico
Meanwhile, I, Nadine, Ari, David K, and Saarya played PR. This was Nadine's first time actually playing, and Ari's first non-two player game. The first two plantation sets were multiples of coffee, indigo and corn. The third set had tobacco. Only the fourth set brought us sugar. Meanwhile we all took coffee, with me trailing the other two, and even though I got my roaster first, I was afraid to produce, knowing it would all be shipped, or traded before me, anyway. A careful building strategy on my part landed me an early Factory, and I chose Wharf over Harbor, and finally Custom's House. Ari, meanwhile had Harbor and Wharf, but no big buildings. It all ended up pretty close, with scores of 50, 47, 45, 44, and 42.

I think a good time was had by all. If I can be sure of who is coming for which sessions, we could oragnize the games in advance, assuming no surprise visitors show up. Another future project. Til next time ...

Attendees: Yehuda, Ephrayim, Nadine, Sharon, Roy, Rachel, Ben, Yacov, Saarya

This week I met the major importers of games and gaming products into Israel. The imports consist of WotC, Mayfair (Settlers), other card and RPG stuff, and miniature / warhammer stuff, and soon to be Fantasy Flight and a few others. Unfortunately, all of the prices they are selling are more than it would cost me to buy retail, ship airmail (let alone surface) AND pay VAT AND pay import taxes.

Nevertheless, they are nice guys, and I hope we can do things for each other with regards to league play, tournaments, etc...

Sharon and I and two of my kids saw Return of the King. Very enjoyable, of course. Can't wait for all three extended versions so we can watch the whole thing the way it was supposed to be shown.

El Grande
We finally got to play El Grande! A great game, but, like the rest of our games, always a bit slower than it should be. There were no real rules problems, and by round 3 we already were starting to work on tactics, There seemed to be a lot more tactics than strategy, from what I've seen so far. The game looked like a runaway win by Sharon, followed by Nadine, but by the end, Sharon only won by 3 points (102) to a second place tie by Nadine and I. Ephrayim really started off trailing, but managed to make a better showing during the last half, although not enough to put him in competition.

Ephrayim came to his first session here. He is an old time war gamer, so I'm sure he had an adjustment to make to working out the likes of El Grande, but he seemed to enjoy himself, and promised to return, and to bring a game with him that he thought we might enjoy.

Puerto Rico
Meanwhile, Rachel (my wife) and Ben and Yacov played a Puerto Rico game, which Ben won by 1 point, his third straight win.

Citadels
After the first games were over, and the dust was settled, Sharon and Nadine and Saarya and Rachel and I stuck it out to try a Citadels game. We had been playing 2, 3 and 4 player during the week, this was our first 5 player game. So far, I like the game as 2 or 3 player over 4 or 5, although 4 I like least. The game is a good game for kids and grownups to play together, because it is enjoyable enough for grown ups to play with them, and simple enough for kids to figure out. But, as Sharon and Nadine pointed out, it is just not engaging enough for the length of play. It really should be a shorter game, or quicker, or something. Saarya won by one point (29), with Rachel and I trailing behind at 28.

I am waiting to find the right time to try Princes of Florence and Bang. I think Bang might suffer the same problems as Citadels, but I don't know yet. PoF just looks very beautiful, but very involved, which means players with time for thoughtful liesurely play. Since we all enjoyed El Grande, I think it will have to sit for a while, unless I get to play it outside of the club.

See you next week.

Attendees: Yehuda, Haim Frydman, Ben, Denya, Saarya, Tal, Nadine, Sharon

Ben brought his neighbor Genya (originally from Siberia) over for her first official night of games, and Haim, who had played with us before we became an official club, made his return.

David and Goliath
We started off with some David and Goliath to warm us up (Yehuda, Ben, Genya, Haim and Saarya). It was Haim and Genya's first time, so naturally Haim won, by a pretty close score. Another game had Ben winning by a pretty large margin. I think he had over 80 points, when the average score is about 30-50.

Puerto Rico
Next came the entree, a 5 player game of Puerto Rico, same players. I finally agree with Alex and Jim about 5 player PR being more prone to collusion, as Ben and Haim methodically aimed to take me down. Due to strange money supply, me only producing coffee and corn, and an unfortunate early shipment of coffee, I opted for an early Harbor which was huge, equally huge was the lack of money needed at the critical time necesary to buy the last big building, leaving me with no big buildings and Ben with 2. I still ended up with 44 shipping points, but only 12 building points, and he won by 1 point, 57 to 56.

Settlers of Catan
While we had been playing, Nadine and Sharon arrived, and they played Settlers with my daughter, Tal. They finished only a few minutes after we did, with a victory for Sharon: 3 cities, longest road and 2 hidden vp's.

Take 6
Everyone except Sharon, Nadine and Haim left, and it was getting late, so we went back to some light fare, introducing a few light games to those who hadn't played, yet. One game of Take 6 (very close, my win of 35 to 37, 37 and 41) and a last game of David and Goliath, also won by Haim.

Next week we will go to LotR, hopefully, and then game, or vice versa. See you then!

Attendees: Yehuda, Nadine, Sharon

Well, we almost didn't have a session, but at the last minure Nadine called and said she would come over if anyone else shows up. At 9:00, Sharon showed up, so Nadine came over and we had a simple and relaxing game of Settlers.

It was a very enjoyable, albeit long, experience, with room for building all over the place, and points handed out for road, army and developement. Nadine and Sharon both targetd me with the robber early on, so I lost some early developement, but when the robber did move, it seemed to attract the dice fairly consistently for all players. And except for a slew of early 9's, which gave all of us one resource, most the the rolls were unexceptional.

Thus, we all had a close game, and despite an early lead by Nadine, Sharon and I ended up neck and neck, until she took the victory the same round I would have (barring a 7 being rolled).

Anyway, I hope to see the lot of you next week, and if anyone is up for a longer game during channukah, let me know. I think we will make it a half day, especially if my games get here by then. I think they are held up by the strike in meches.

Attendees: Yehuda, Ben, David B, David K, Yacov, Nadine, Sharon

I can't afford many games, but I am willing to try out games by crafting them out of stuff I find lying around. Sometimes what I craft is not exactly the original game...

Turn a Settlers of Catan board upside down. Evenly space 4 settlements of each color around the nexii on the edges of the board. If you have the 5-6 player expansion, I guess you could put 3 settlements of 6 colors. Each player then gets a random hidden color to connect using the roads, starts by placing a city on the board as his starting position, and walla, you have a mini TransAmerica.

I played three games with my daughter and David K, I won twice, and my daughter (age 10) won once. It is not the same as the real game, of course, but I think with a little sprucing it might suffice for a little game filler. Also, the positions all start equal, so noone can complain of being dealt bad cities to start with.

Afterwards, I tried out a game I invented called Tripole and submitted to the shared playing pieces contest on about.com. I played with David, who beat me. Basically, fill 37 hexes with 36 pieces, one per hex, 12 of blue, yellow and red. Each person is allowed to move one piece to combine with another, scoring for green, purple and orange points. When the game permits, you can score a tripole, removing it from the board for 1 wild point. The game suffers from a very chaotic opening, followed by a not chatoic enough ending. I need to tweak he rules to get it right, because there is a great game in there somewhere.

By then, we were hankering for something real, so David K and I played Magic, using 1 card of the alphabet from one color, no color hosers. He player red, I played green, and as usual, even though I thought I had a better deck, he beat me 2 games to 3.

Ben and David B showed up. David B, my other brother, doesn't usually come, but he is interested in these games, so we played Puerto Rico. David K refused to sit on my left. My brother Ben, amazingly enough, won with one more point than me. For the first time, everyone took my basic strategy advice about going for early money. Each play was thoughtful, yet not too long for all, and it was one of the most fun games I have played with straight PR in a while. With good players, you can play many times.

Next, Nadine and Yacov showed up, Ben left. Someone else was supposed to come, so I thought Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers wouldn't take long, even though we had to introduce both Yacov and Nadine to the game. I was wrong, as, unlike PR, you should not overly analyze CC or you can be there all night. Suffice to say that there was a tie win between David B and Yacov.

Well, the other player, a friend of Yacov's, Sharon, showed up during the above, and Ben and Nadine left. Since we weren't sure how late we wanted to stay up, I broke out the even lighter games of David and Goliath and Take 6. We played 2 games of D&G, which gets more interesting, as I learn the strategies. I and David K each took a game. Sharon liked it so much, she said she wanted to pick up a copy when next she is in the states. Take 6 was after Yacov left, and I took that one. Most of our Take 6 games end up being a slaughter by one person, and this one was no exception. Sharon expressed interest in returning, so hear hear.

I am looking into plans to have an Israeli gaming convention. Anyone interested in attending or helping out is welcome to contact me.